“Scary,” Sveta said. “I feel like the brain should be sacrosanct.”

“It’s really scary,” Tattletale answered. “Once you get a look at who she really is… let’s just say that part of the reason I’m more or less ruling her out as a culprit is that she wouldn’t need to be subtle. If she wanted to do this, she’d do it blatantly and she’d succeed.”

“Oookay, Tattletale,” I said. “Dealing with more than enough paranoia already. Dragon’s given us no reason to doubt her.”

“I’m not saying we should doubt her. I’m saying we should shit ourselves if and when the day arrives that we do. For now, I’d put all my chips on Dragon being alright. She’s weighing not trusting you, which is entirely understandable, with two more incidents that probably just popped up recently. Our player is ramping up, getting more schemes into play. Not so much it seems like too much, but distractions.”

“I worked with a loose team that was working with Tattletale, around Gold Morning,” Sveta told me. “Having her working from an investigating or planning role like this is kind of like those candidates for class president you see in movies, who promise soda pop in the fountains and shorter school days for everyone. They deliver on these really thinly justified ideas when they shouldn’t.”

“That’s a good analogy,” Tattletale answered. “Except you’re outing yourself as someone who didn’t go to school or spend nearly enough time around ordinary people, because you call it ‘soda pop’ like a nineteen fifties character, not even ‘pop’ like a midwesterner, but—”

“Get bent, Tattletale,” Sveta said, interrupting.

“Leave her alone,” I added. “Read the room and learn to be nice when it matters.”

Tattletale looked at her driver, eyes wide.

“Don’t look at me,” Snuff said. “I’m doing my job and staying out of trouble while I do it.”

“I’m outnumbered two against one,” Tattletale said.

“That’s what happens when you’re a jackass,” Sveta said.

Tattletale slumped back into her seat, head bumping against her window. Sveta, at the same time, was sitting behind Tattletale, and looked out her own window, creating a kind of maximum distance between them, insofar as it was possible in this confined space.

Sveta was coping better than I’d imagined, and I had to wonder how much of that was an extension of the personal control she’d honed with her sessions with Rain. She didn’t look happy, for one thing: the lines of her face were different. She’d turned much of her emotion into being very ready to call Tattletale on her shit. Provided Tattletale didn’t retaliate or take it too hard, it seemed like a pretty reasonable outlet, if there had to be any outlet at all.